Decolonising and anti-racism additional resources

Blog posts, podcasts and videos; University training, networks and signposting; External toolkits, guidance and websites; Journal articles and book chapters.

Blog posts

Useful Teaching Matters blog posts focusing on decolonising the curriculum and anti-racism include:

The ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ Hub: This Teaching Matters blog post provides some context behind the creation of the university's Decolonising the curriculum SharePoint site and the ways that you can contribute.
EDI and decolonising initiatives in the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures: Dr Benjamin Bateman outlines work in advancing EDI initiatives in the School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (LLC), including Project Myopia, and trauma-informed pedagogy.
Teaching approaches for decolonising and diversifying the curriculum: Sílvia Pérez-Espona, Fiona Borthwick, Louise Connelly, and Susan Rhind describe one workshop organised at Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, which provided an illustration of teaching practices that are already in place in two online postgraduate taught programme.
CMVM Good Practice Showcase 2022: Equality, diversity and inclusion.
Prioritising equality, diversity and inclusion activities through the Enhancement Themes.
Closing the degree awarding gap: How can we ensure that ethnic minority students reach their full potential at our university?

Race and Inclusivity in Global Education Network (RIGEN) Blogs: These blog posts from the Race and Inclusivity in Global Education Network (RIGEN) explore issues related to promoting race equality, inclusivity, and anti-racism.

Podcasts

The RACE.ED podcast, Undersong, acts as a local and global platform to exchange critical thought around race and the legacies that shape our world.

Decolonising the Curriculum – Sharing Ideas: The Podcast Series: This excellent Decolonising the curriculum podcast series from The Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee (REAR) and Teaching Matters features academics at the University discussing what Decolonising the curriculum means for them, and how they have put this into practice in their learning and teaching or research.

Podcast: Nini Fang’s story (21 minutes): A moving story from Dr Nina Fang on her tumultuous, personal experience of delivering classes on racism and colonisation at an English university.

Commonwealth Scholars’ experiences of diversity and inclusion: A Teaching Matters podcast episode hosted by Anna Boud with guests, Commonweath students, Ugo Okoye and Vivek Pachpande. Ugo and Vivek discuss how diverse and inclusive they have found higher education during their study abroad in Scotland, and reflect on what counts as valid knowledge, and assessment in a different culture. For example, Ugo suggests that the medium of song and dance in Nigeria may be a more authentic way of assessing students’ comprehension of concepts.

Videos

ScotGEESE seminar: Decolonising earth science with Dr Steve Rogers (1 hour): This video explores steps being taken to decolonise the Earth sciences curriculum at Keele university. It comes from a University of Edinburgh led network called ScotGEESE that aims to support Geography, Earth and Environmental Science Educators. Join the ScotGEESE network at JiscMail.

Decolonising Divinity: A Roundtable Discussion (1 hour 15 mins): This video from 2021 is a roundtable discussion about decolonising theology and religious studies. The panel of scholars are from Religious Studies, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and World Christianity, at the School of Divinity.

ConveRACEions with Rashné Limki and colleagues (50 mins): This video explores processes of decolonisation taking place within the Business School.

University of Edinburgh Learning and Teaching Conference 2021

Prof Rowena Arshad: Diversity in learning and teaching: Is inclusion truly achievable? – Learning and Teaching Conference 2021 Keynote talk.
The Microaggressions Project (Rayya Ghul, Rhys Seeburger, Raahat Manrai, and Jaime Llorente Prada; 30 minutes), and Inclusive cultures and Higher Education, (Gabrielle King, Rachel Hunt, and Clare Barnes; 15 minutes), and Unconscious bias in education, (Sonia Afonso De Barros; 15 minutes).
‘Gone too far’: lived realities, ethical relations and confrontations in the neo-liberal university (Nini Fang and Anne Pirrie), and Identifying and addressing evidence of neo-colonialism in course curricula (Rowan Murray; 1hr).

University of Edinburgh Learning and Teaching Conference 2022

YourEd+ supporting the journey of students from widening participation backgrounds, a panel (Pat Reid & Matt Lucas), and Staff perspectives on embedding inclusiveness in internationalised classrooms, a short talk (Omolabake Fakunle, Velda McCune & Yifang Xu) (46 mins).

Signposting

The best place to get started is to visit the University's Decolonising the Curriculum Hub.

Race Studies - Race and Decolonial Studies: Information Services have put together a useful guide on library resources and other services related to decolonisation and race.

Introduction - A Quick Guide for New Course Proposers: A very useful resource from W. Victoria Lee provides a step-by-step guide to incorporating decolonisation and inclusion into course design at Board of Studies level.

Networks

The RACE.ED network is a cross-university and multi-disciplinary network concerned with race, racialization and decolonial studies. Of particular interest might be the work they have compiled to showcase pre-existing and new University of Edinburgh courses related to questions of race, colonialism/coloniality and decolonial studies which you can find here: Teaching - RACE.ED.

Race Equality and Anti-Racist Subcommittee (REAR): This is a thematic committee of the University Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Committee (EDIC).

As part of the Decolonising the Curriculum Hub SharePoint site, Rayya Ghul has compiled a comprehensive list of external resources: External Resources (sharepoint.com). Below we have pulled out a couple of examples that we recommend reading:

Decolonising the Curriculum Staff Guide: Work by Keele University staff and students to examine and transform their curriculum.
Decolonising the Curriculum toolkit: Manchester Metropolitan University's toolkit, which includes reflections from eight academic colleagues from across the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Journals and journal articles

Menon, B. R. K., 2021. The missing colours of chemistry, Nature Chemistry, Vol 13.

Mignolo, D., W. 2017. Coloniality Is Far from Over, and So Must Be Decoloniality, Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry: Vol 43.

Gopal, P. 2021. On decolonisation and the university, Textual Practice, Vol 35 (6).

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South: This online and open-access journal fosters dialogue and research on teaching and learning in higher education in the global South, or about the global South.

Books and book chapters

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. This work explores the origins for the concept of the nation-state and its impact on people's psyches.

Eddo-Lodge, R. 2017. Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race. A critical analysis of what it means to be Black in 21st century Britain.

Ghosh, A. 2021. The nutmeg's curse: parables for a planet in crisis. This book demonstrated the interconnections between the exploitation of people and the natural world. In their Sixth Assessment of the impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have for the first time acknowledged the impact that "ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” have on people's vulnerability to climate change (IPCC, 2022).

This article was published on 2024-11-08